


don't think about how much it will hurt

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Classism, Fights, First Meetings, Gen, Pre-Canon, Violence, hurt and a distinct lack of comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10532463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Ronan does not want Gansey to adopt the scholarship student. Ronan does not want to care about the scholarship student.





	

Gansey should buy a puppy.

They've never had a pet at Monmouth before, and Ronan has been fine with that, since it means there's nothing shedding fur and pissing on his bed and whatever else some spoiled Gansey puppy would get up to. Gansey would probably want Ronan to take it on walks. Ronan isn't going to pick up dog crap.

But it turns out Gansey has some goddamn _mothering_ instinct he needs to work through, and if the choices are 'smelly ass dog' or 'teenage charity case', Ronan could get used to a dog.

"You know what this is?" Gansey asks over the roar of the Pig's engine.

"Waste of my time?"

Gansey answers his own question and ignores Ronan's input. Way to make Ronan feel listened to, Gansey.

"It's only child syndrome. Which is funny because you have two brothers."

"I have two brothers," Ronan says. "Which means I don't need any more _sharing_ in my life."

"'Any more' sharing implies that you've managed to share anything before."

"If you know I can't do it, why are you trying?"

"Because I believe in the perfectibility of mankind," Gansey says. "And anyway, it's supposed to rain today. We can't make Parrish ride his bicycle to school in the rain. It's a safety issue."

Ronan doesn't see a problem. Parrish has apparently been doing just that all along and hasn't lost a limb yet. Unfortunately.

"He's the one who decided not to drive to school."

"Ronan Lynch," Gansey says. "Not everyone is born with money."

"Some have money thrust upon them? Are you going to thrust your money on -- "

"If you're going to be disgusting," Gansey says, "maybe you should walk the rest of the way."

"But it's going to rain," Ronan says. "That's a safety issue."

Gansey huffs, unhappy. "Just -- try to be friendly. Okay?"

"Why do I have to be _friendly?_ " Ronan asks. "Doesn't he have his own friends?"

"Yes. Me."

Ronan waits for Gansey to say it. To say that Ronan would be alone without Gansey, too. To admit that's what he's doing, benevolently taking in strays like he's St. Richard, patron of the lonely and the broken.

But Gansey doesn't, and it pisses Ronan off.

Instead, he says, "You should give Parrish a chance. You'd like him. He knows about cars."

"So does the Blue Book, why don't you take it on a date."

"This upsets me." Gansey looms. Or tries to loom. Gansey is only ever intimidating when he doesn't want to be. "The way no one values platonic friendships anymore. Anytime anyone wants to do something for a friend, it's always assumed there has to be some sexual or romantic -- _would_ you knock it off."

Apparently ten seconds is the longest he can handle Ronan making a _blah blah blah_ hand gesture in his face. Good to know.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Ronan asks, as Gansey turns the Pig around again, driving them back the way they'd just come.

"It's around here somewhere, I'll find it," Gansey mutters, without any conviction.

"You and your new boyfriend are going to make me late for first period," Ronan says. "I'm not going to be able to turn in my homework."

"Oh, you do your homework now?" Gansey turns them down a dirt path that is not, in any way, a road. Ronan's pretty sure he only turned out of stubborn refusal to admit that he doesn't know where they're going. The Pig makes a truly alarming noise as it bottoms out.

Gansey swears, which Ronan usually enjoys, but right now he's busy worrying about the Camaro. It doesn't deserve this kind of abuse for the sake of some scholarship kid, not even if he was the one who got it running again the other day.

"Turn around before we get stranded out here," Ronan says, and Gansey has a look on his face like he's about to agree, before the path swerves and the first trailer comes into view.

"We found it?" Gansey sounds less convinced than before, even. His eyes are wide and glassy as he takes in peeling paint, broken bottles, howling mutts. There's a half-dressed child hanging out the door to one of the trailers, muddy and androgynous, who's calling them names that even _Ronan_ didn't know at that age. Ronan scowls at it, which only eggs the kid on, like it has no sense of self-preservation. Or no self worth preserving.

"This is fucking bleak."

Gansey shoots him a look. "Maybe you shouldn't say anything."

"Then how am I supposed to make friends?"

"Look -- there he is." Gansey stops the Camaro in front of one of the trailers, indistinguishable from any of its neighbors except for the thin worried boy in the Aglionby uniform sitting on the stairs.

Parrish scrambles up as soon as he sees them, grabbing his bag.

"Just be decent, Ronan."

Ronan glances at Gansey, but can't hold his eyes.

"I'm not riding in the back."

"Fine," Gansey says, and gets out of the car to push his seat forward.

"Thanks." Parrish has an accent Ronan could wallow in. Ronan doesn't remember him sounding like that in class, but maybe there's no other way for him to sound, surrounded by all this. Or maybe Ronan is mis-remembering. He doesn't pay a lot of attention to Parrish, or to class in general. "I hope you didn't have too much trouble finding the place."

"Not at all," Gansey lies, and Ronan snorts.

Parrish pauses for a second, half-way crawled into the back seat, and flattens his eyebrows at Ronan.

Ronan flattens his eyebrows right back. That's only half a scowl. That's _decent_.

Then the door of Parrish's trailer opens with a bang.

Parrish throws himself the rest of the way into the car as an unshaven man comes charges out of the trailer.

"Dammit." Parrish tries to flatten himself against the seat, keeping his face out of the window. Like he can hide, like there's anywhere else he could have gone in this depressing fucking Dickensian landscape.

"You must be Mr. Parrish," Gansey says, because sometimes Gansey is too stupid to go outside on his own.

"Get in the car," Ronan hisses.

Parrish says, "Just go, God," at the same time.

But Ronan thinks what really settles it for Gansey is Parrish's dad pointing at the car and bellowing, " _Get that fucking thing off my property, you -- _" and a string of words that Ronan is absolutely going to throw back in Gansey's face the next time Gansey tries to make Ronan _be decent_ or _make friends_.__

____

Parrish has a hand over his eyes. Ronan is absolutely going to throw this back in his face, too, whenever he does whatever it is he's going to do to piss Ronan off.

____

Gansey, the idiot, has finally gotten himself back in the car and shifted it into gear, but this doesn't do much to appease Parrish's redneck dad. He hollers after them until they're out of view up the shitty not-a-dirt-road.

____

Parrish slides even lower in the seat.

____

Ronan can't stop smirking.

____

"So," Gansey coughs, and Parrish meets his eyes in the rear-view mirror, looking cagey. "Adam Parrish, you've met Ronan Lynch, right?"

____

Parrish looks over from Gansey to Ronan. His expression grows even warier.

____

"Sure," Parrish says. The accent is receding, like he's becoming more of a real person the further they take him away from the shit hole he lives in. "He looks familiar, I think I've seen him in class once or twice."

____

Gansey nods at that, because Gansey is still in idiot mode. But Ronan doesn't fall for it, keeps his eyes on Parrish's, lets the smirk drop off his face for his natural, hostile expression.

____

Parrish doesn't waver.

____

So he's not going to pretend to like Ronan either -- good. It's not like Ronan was going to _be decent_ to him, in any case. It's not his fucking job to look out for Parrish.

____

-

____

First there's the bruise over Parrish's cheekbone, the unintentionally hilarious explanation that "I dropped a wrench on my face."

____

Then there's the split lip. Ronan doesn't hear what Parrish tells Gansey about that. When Ronan comments on it he just gets a dry "I didn't know you cared, Lynch."

____

The next week Parrish misses a day of school. When he comes back it's with a black eye. The split lip is re-opened, and he moves his right arm stiffly, like he wrenched a muscle.

____

He must know how pathetic his appearance is, because he doesn't try to make up a story about being clumsy.

____

"You look like shit," Ronan tells him.

____

"Thanks." Parrish shoots him a dirty look. "I got in fight."

____

There are bruises peeking out from Parrish's shirtsleeve, like someone had grabbed his wrist too hard and yanked him by it. There are not any scrapes or bruises on his knuckles.

____

Someone had hit him, but Parrish hadn't hit back.

____

"Really." Ronan stares him down.

____

But Parrish has had a lot of exposure to Ronan by now, and he was never that easy to push around in the first place.

____

"Yeah," he says. "Really."

____

It could have been someone at Aglionby. Bullying or hazing or whatever the fuck special episode bullshit teenagers are supposed to be doing to each other.

____

But the timing doesn't work. There's no reason for Parrish to get picked on _now_ , after Gansey has taken him under his wing like an ugly little baby bird. And he was out sick, yesterday.

____

"That's stupid," Ronan tells him.

____

"I can't believe I'm getting a lecture from you, Lynch." Parrish frowns, and then winces. There's blood on his lip. "Have you decided to add _enormous hypocrite_ to your resume?"

____

Parrish subscribes to the _best defense is a good offense_ policy.

____

It usually is, but Ronan doesn't actually care what happens to Parrish. And _not caring_ is a pretty good defense, too.

____

"When I get in a fight, I win."

____

"Congrats," Parrish says. "You must be so proud of yourself."

____

-

____

"He didn't get in a fight."

____

Ronan sits in the passenger seat of the Pig and doesn't say anything. It isn't a question if they both know the answer.

____

"Someone did that to him."

____

Ronan looks out the window. Endless Virginia countryside, and nowhere in it that he wants to go.

____

Gansey is silent for so long that Ronan thinks that might be the end of the conversation.

____

But, no.

____

"Have you ever heard him talk about his parents?"

____

"What," Ronan asks, "on our Sunday brunches where we do our nails and talk about our feelings?"

____

"Ronan, I'm serious. This is important."

____

"Then why are you asking me? He doesn't even like me. You think he's going to tell me _Lynch, my dad beats the shit out of me --_ "

____

Gansey flinches so hard that Ronan feels it, in his gut.

____

For a second Ronan is so fucking sick of himself that he wants to die.

____

"We could tell someone," Gansey says, utterly wretched but still trying to _make a decision,_ because that's what _leaders_ do, that's what _friends_ do. "At school. They know how to deal with this sort of thing. I think they get trained on -- child abuse."

____

Ronan snorts. He doesn't trust the school's judgment. They've seen Parrish every day and failed to notice that anything is wrong. They've seen Ronan over the last year and decided the best way to handle his _behavioral issues_ is to bitch at him about his attendance, so how much could they know about anything?

____

"We could call the cops," Gansey says.

____

"He can call the cops," Ronan says. "It's a three digit phone number, it's not hard to do."

____

"You could have a little more sympathy, Ronan," but Ronan can't, he can't, he can't. There is too much grief in his heart. He has none left for Parrish and his split lip. "It's hard to make a decision when you're in the middle of a situation. Maybe he needs us to do it for him."

____

"He'd never forgive you."

____

"Do you mean that?"

____

The truth of this is too obvious to repeat. Parrish clings to grudges like a drowning man trying to stay afloat.

____

Gansey shakes his head. "That's not the point. The right thing is the right thing, even if it costs you a friend. Don't you think?"

____

Ronan thinks that nothing right is ever easy. He thinks that a person's secrets are their own damn business. He thinks cops are useless assholes. He thinks a man has to fight his own battles.

____

He tells Gansey, "I think pissing Parrish off is my job."

____

-

____

Ronan waits until Parrish is using his arm normally again, because there's no point in starting him off with bad habits, and then he waits until they have a moment where Gansey isn't around, because there's no point in letting Gansey see him do anything that could be construed as _nice_. It would only give Gansey ideas.

____

But there's an afternoon where they're out in the middle of fuck-off nowhere, loitering around the Pig while Gansey goes hiking off a mile in the distance trying to get signal on his phone to talk to his ancient professor buddy, and it's not like they have anything better to do.

____

"Parrish," Ronan says. Parrish gives him an extremely bored look. Like he does think there's something better he could be doing in the middle of fuck-off nowhere than talking to Ronan. "Put your hands up."

____

"No."

____

"C'mon." Ronan demonstrates, holds his hands up in front of him, chest-high, palms out, and drops them.

____

"Yeah, I'm not doing that."

____

"Fine," Ronan says, and swings his fist toward Parrish.

____

It's a slow punch, wouldn't have hurt even if it had landed, even if Ronan had been aiming at Parrish and not at the air two inches in front of him.

____

It doesn't get there anyway, because Parrish avoids. He takes one single step back, no more than that, and the expression on his face settles on _anger_.

____

But for a split second before that he's white and wide-eyed with terror.

____

"What the _hell_."

____

"I'm not going to hit you, moron."

____

"Right. Where could I have possibly gotten that idea?"

____

"I'm going to teach you how to fight," Ronan says.

____

Parrish is toying with being _confused_. "What? Why?"

____

"I'm sick of seeing your pitiful bashed in face," which is even true. "Put your hands up."

____

"No," and since Parrish is not an idiot, he adds, "and don't take another swing at me, jackass."

____

_Angry_ is winning out against _confused_. Ronan can work with angry. "Fine, you try. Make a fist."

____

Parrish's hand twitches, like he's thinking about doing just that, but he doesn't. "I'm trying not to get in fights," he says. "Learning how to fight doesn't help that."

____

"Yeah, and if you don't teach teenagers about condoms they won't have sex." Ronan rolls his eyes. "If you're going to get in fights you should win."

____

"I don't need advice, Lynch, and if I did you would be the last person I went to."

____

"Right, I'm sure you get lots of great advice from your trailer park family -- "

____

Parrish takes a step forward, and then another, until they're closer than when they started. "Shut the hell up about my family."

____

"Make me."

____

There's a split second where he thinks about it, curls his hand into a fist and takes another step forward --

____

But then, with a visible effort, he holds back.

____

His fist is still clenched.

____

"You're _disturbed,_ " he snarls at Ronan. "What, do you get off on violence or something?"

____

"In your dreams, Parrish."

____

Parrish is freezing over -- not any less angry, but less explosively angry. Ronan might be able to provoke him into attacking, or he might just provoke him into murdering Ronan in his sleep three months from now. Parrish has a little bit of that _psychopath_ energy.

____

So Ronan changes tactics.

____

He takes Parrish by the forearm -- not the wrist -- and lifts his hand, presses his thumb against the crease between Parrish's index and middle fingers.

____

"Don't clench your fist so tight, you'll break something," Ronan says. "I know you're repressed and all, but -- "

____

"Like you can talk." Parrish does, actually, relax his grip the tiniest bit, probably because he's fucking programmed to follow instructions. Goddamn teacher's pet. He doesn't try to pull his arm free, which would be more interesting.

____

But of course he doesn't. Parrish doesn't fight back.

____

"Never stick your thumb inside your fist," Ronan says, even though Parrish got it right this time. That could just be luck.

____

"Yeah, everyone knows that," Parrish says. "I'm really starting to doubt your expertise."

____

Ronan smirks, because Parrish is somehow _failing_ to get under Ronan's skin, when it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Most of the time people do it without trying.

____

And Parrish's sore spots might as well have neon signs pointing to them.

____

"Step forward _when_ you throw the punch," Ronan says, slowly and enunciating his words like he's talking to a child. "Not before. Because that way your whole body is behind the blow -- "

____

"I'm not an idiot," Parrish snaps. It's sort of beautiful, the way fury splashes across his features. Ronan might actually be disturbed.

____

"You're doing something wrong," Ronan says. "If you get in this many fights and you never win any."

____

There. That flick of the eyes, away from Ronan and back.

____

He knows he's being called out.

____

He tilts his head up, defiant, like he's waiting for Ronan to say something more, but Ronan's not Gansey. He doesn't need to have a big emotional moment where they cry and feel better about themselves. He's told Parrish what he wants, and so now it's up to Parrish. He can learn how to fight or he can tell the truth and Ronan will -- 

____

Ronan doesn't know what he'll do if that happens. Go beat the shit out of Parrish's dad, probably. Or just -- take him, lock him in the car and drive off somewhere.

____

Except there's nothing to stop him from doing any of that _now_. He knows Parrish is lying and Parrish knows he knows he's lying, so why isn't he doing something instead of standing here holding Parrish's hand?

____

"That's my problem," Parrish says, not angry and not defensive but just so goddamn tired. "And I'm dealing with it."

____

"Right," Ronan says. "This is you _dealing_."

____

"It's better than punching my way through. You know 'live by the sword, die by the sword'?"

____

"Because it's not like this ends with you dead anyway."

____

"Because I don't want to be good at hurting people," Parrish snaps, "I don't want to be like -- you."

____

That isn't what he was going to say, but it's still true. He doesn't want to be like Ronan. Ronan can't blame him. Most of the time, Ronan doesn't want to be like Ronan.

____

This may be the first honest moment the two of them have ever had. Gansey would be _so_ proud.

____

"Look, Parrish," Ronan says. "I don't really give a shit about you."

____

"I can tell."

____

Ronan glares at him, and Parrish glares back.

____

"So I don't care what the hell you do. But Gansey likes you for some reason, and he deserves better than you lying to him. You can tell him to fuck off when he's nosy, he's used to that. But don't _lie_."

____

There's a long moment where Ronan thinks Parrish is going to tell him to go to hell, and then Parrish is not glaring anymore.

____

It leaves Ronan off-balance. Like pushing against a wall and finding out it's a door when someone opens it from the other side.

____

If Parrish doesn't hate him, there's no reason for them to be standing so close, touching each other, talking at all.

____

Ronan lets him go.

____

"Thanks," Parrish says, "I'll keep that in mind."

____

-

____

A month later, it's bruising on his jaw, invisible from one side, grotesque from the other.

____

Ronan isn't disappointed. It isn't like he thought one conversation where Parrish didn't even listen to him was going to change anything. That's not how the world works. Ronan knows that.

____

Parrish catches him staring.

____

"Getting in fights again?" Ronan asks.

____

Parrish hesitates, before he says, "No."

____

At least Parrish isn't lying anymore.

____

But God, everything else about this fucking _sucks_.

____

-

____

Ronan stops riding to school with Gansey, most days.

____

Gansey despairs, and takes every opportunity to lecture Ronan about his attendance. It is true that driving himself to school lets him skip out early, or come in late, or not show up at all. And that's why Ronan does it.

____

That, and so he doesn't have to sit in the Pig and make small talk with Parrish every goddamn day.

____

It's nothing to do with that moment, pulling up to the end of the dirt road, waiting to see the damage on Parrish's face, reminding himself to _be decent_ so he doesn't get out of the car and go looking for Parrish's dad.

____

Ronan drives himself to school, and lets Parrish handle his own damn problems, and doesn't worry about him at all.

____

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/159155815080/dont-think-about-how-much-it-will-hurt).


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